1. Field
Invention relates generally to authorization of actions on computer systems, and in particular to authorization based on the program initiating the action.
2. Related Art
Access control is a useful and practical concept in the field of information technology. The definition, monitoring and enforcement of access control policies contribute to the predictable and manageable operation and maintenance of business assets and processes.
An abstraction central to access control is that of subjects performing actions on objects. A familiar example of this is a user (subject) attempting to delete (action) a file (object) on a computer. The usefulness of this abstraction stems from the fact that policies can be defined based on an identification of the subject and the object, as well as an authorization for the particular action attempted by the subject on the object. Once defined, such policies can be monitored and enforced, affording visibility into and control over the access and action patterns.
While actions attempted by human subjects are ultimately performed by one or more processes running on the computer, in traditional access control the authorization policies are generally defined for “human” subjects, such as users and system administrators, and tied to credentials such as logins and passwords and file ownerships. As a result, while in theory it is possible to define authorization policies based non-human subjects such as programs and processes running on a computer, today such definitions simply defer to the particular user context within which the subject program or process is executing, using that context as an input into the authorization policy instead of relying on an identification of the process or program itself.
There are a number of reasons why program-based authorization is increasingly needed today, including: a rise in the software-based automation of tasks and decisions such as system provisioning and anti-malware protection, a prevalence of exploits attempted by programs and processes running with minimal human interaction or supervision (such as software worms), the frequent practice of privilege escalation by both programs and humans attempting to gain a “privileged user” status in order to run a program with broader permissions than are allowed under the lower privilege and often resulting in malicious or accidental system breakage, and so forth.
Therefore, a need exists for techniques that allow program-based authorization, allowing authorization decisions to take into account not only the action, the object and the user context of the subject process, but also a range of other attributes of the subject process, such as the program being executed by the subject process.